Schemas, Scripts, and Ethical Decision Making

I accept that group think played a big part in the decision peocess, but I'm suprised that they took such a short sighted view. The Ford brand was more important than the introduction of the Pinto. Even in the late 60's and early 70's Ford must have had some folks evaluating overall risk to the firm, such as reputation, liability (beyound their simple cost metric), and long term customer trust. I suppose that reviewing these risks as part of the process fits into his prescription.

I'm not sure I buy his diagnosis with this case. Prior to his position with Ford, he never had any issues making ethical decisions. What concerns me about this is that once he came into that position, suddenly his values changed. I understand the nature and culture of his position and that using script schemas helps him complete his job without going crazy. However, one can only think that despite those scripts telling you to look over small matters, your values and ethical standings would tell you something is wrong when you have information before you with descriptions of people losing their lives in small traffic collisions. Anytime a life is lost, it's a serious matter. Like Katie Richards' stated in her post, either Gioia is making excuses for his extremely poor performance, or there's an underling issue within himself with regards to what he does or doesn't value.

No, I do not buy his diagnosis or agree with his prescription. In Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article, The Engineer's Lament, the author seems to agree, to some extent, with Gioia's explanation about why he did not pursue a more strident case for recalling the car (He did put the Pinto case "on the docket," which was part of the recall process.). This agreement echoes Gioia's assertion that he was using a script schema of an auto engineer and one of Ford's corporate culture. Within the former assertion, the metrics that engineers use to quantify performance suggested that the Pinto was not defective, and therefore dangerous because of a defect, in a way that was statistically significant. Gladwell opines that this is a reasonable way of seeing the world. Based on the ways in which engineers see a thing that has been engineered, the Pinto was no more dangerous than other compact class cars. Indeed, there were other such models that were more dangerous than the Pinto, although the Pinto had more deaths attributed to it in cases where a car caught on fire. In the latter assertion, corporate culture at Ford created a script that meant Gioia had to do the most good for the greatest amount of projects and people. The problem I have with either assertion is that they allow Gioia to divorce himself from culpability, complicity and consequence. And while this may be human nature, while it may be a coping mechanism, it seems too convenient from a self-professed activist two years removed from his bleeding heart principals. That, like Gioia himself noted in his reflections on the case, calls into question the validity of those self assumptions. Regardless whether he didn't know himself or what his values were before taking a job in the not-always-pleasant corporate world, to armor yourself with the schemas of your degree, title and vocation and claim a corporate culture played a significant part in not raising more red flags seems to me to be clutching for something in the hopes it takes the heat off of you, no pun intended.

This is certainly a tough topic to discuss as it appears from several comments. Personally,I understand the diagnosis and can agree with it. I hate the outcome from it, but understand it. A part of the schema everyone is talking about involves Gioia changing his values for the corporate side. We talked about the affect of perception on an individuals performance, there is also a great deal of influence that the roles and responsibilities of a position can have on an individual. It is why people can seem to change so much when they are a fantastic and well-loved sales person, for example, and they get promoted to sales manager or another position. The different responsibilities and roles can greatly affect the individuals actions and performance. One of the lines in Gladwell's article towards the end was that Gioia never saw a pattern of failure, which was the responsibility of his role, and that the Pinto case was a "rare subset of a rare subset of traffic accidents". As Gioia mentioned, to put something on the docket the case usually required twenty accidents and the Pinto never got above five while Gioia managed the file. From the roles and responsibilities, it would be crazy to make a case for the Pinto. But Gioia did go to the chamber of horrors and see the wreck and came back to put the case on the docket, which if anything establishes Gioia still has those bleeding-heart values (I realize he inevitably voted against the case later, unable to prove his point to the team, but I think it is worthy to note, when he left the numbers and responsibility even temporariliy he had not lost his values).

Without rambling too much I wanted to tag off what Tyler said, I too read this article in an engineering ethics course, and as well understand the pressure to look at the numbers. I remember in the discussion of that class it was brought up the circumstances of the Ulrich crash, and how much of an emotional "tug" happens to hear that someone died being engulfed by flames, which has a drastically different and stronger "tug" than the simple someone died in an auto accident. People die in auto accidents all the time and there is not as strong of an emotional response as hearing someone died in an auto accident in a fire. It urges an even stronger "tug" to establish that the accident was preventable, and our trigger response to associate blame kicks in. It would not have mattered if the girls were driving a Pinto that burst into flames or a Vega or VW Beetle that burst in to flames, the emotional response would have been the same, and the backlash would be about equal: "Why wasn't this prevented?","Who could allow a car on the road susceptable to explosion at under 30 mph?".

I agree Ford commited a transgression of fibbing safety reports,delaying a recall, and it was certainly questionable to try and establish the acceptable loss of life and put a monetary value to life, but I understand the case of Gioia. Long winded, but something to be considered.

I understand the role of corporate group think and use of schemas and scripts to drive profits, but I find it hard to believe that a social activist would check his values at the door of Ford's recall division so easily. Perhaps his advice, in retrospect, to decide your values now and build "now think" alerts into scripts should have more merit... he's speaking from difficult experience. But I find it a little too convenient for him to look back and blame the past system while lecturing the public about how to behave better in the future. Hadn't he decided his values as an activist student? Didn't he decide to ignore those values in a quest to move up the corporate ladder? I think that shift in mentality played a bigger role in his decision to ignore the ethical implications of exploding cars than "script-based thinking" or a bottom line philosophy that you can't fix *everything*. The issue wasn't a faulty blinker. Cars. Were. Exploding. Maybe I buy his diagnosis, but the message is lost on the source.

When a person enters a new work environment, they tend to watch and learn about the culture of the new organization, and will at times alter their behavior to "fit in" and be accepted as a new member to the team. Since Professor Gioia had no ethical issues prior to his arrival in this position, something about the culture at Ford must have affected his thinking. Even with wanting to fit in, if that was the case, or be seen as a team player, he should have maintained his ethical behavior and done what was right for the preservation of human life. In the long run it would have been better for the company if he had and lives could have been saved.